Intel's Clear Linux Still Outperforming Other Distributions For Mid-2020

Being well past the half-way point for the year, here is a look at how Intel's performance-optimized Clear Linux distribution is performing compared to its rolling state last December. Plus there are also benchmarks looking at how the current Clear Linux is performing against other rolling-release distributions.

The first part of this article is looking at the state of Clear Linux 33540 from a few days ago compared to Clear Linux 31480, which was the state of Clear Linux last mid-December. The same Core i9 10980XE system was used for benchmarking throughout. Upgrading from the mid-December to recent Clear Linux state meant going from Linux 5.4 to Linux 5.7, GNOME 3.34 to 3.36, GCC 9.2.1 to GCC 10.2.1, updates to the Intel CPU Microcode, Python 3.8.0 to Python 3.8.4, and the default I/O scheduler on NVMe storage switched from MQ-Deadline to BFQ.

First up a variety of benchmarks looking at the late 2019 to current state of Clear Linux. Following that are tests showing how Clear Linux 33540 is comparing to Endeavour OS Rolling, openSUSE Tumbleweed 20200727, Debian Buster Testing, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 20.10 in its daily state as of 1 August.

All of these Linux distribution benchmarks were carried out using the Phoronix Test Suite.